China trip inspires girls

A group of girls took the trip of a lifetime to China this summer as part of our status as an Advanced Confucius Classroom.

The girls spent two weeks experiencing life in Qingdao and Beijing, learning about Chinese culture and history, visiting sites of cultural and historical interest in addition to having around 20 extra hours of language tuition.

The trip is part-funded and organised by the Chinese Government and is a way for children to understand life as a teenager in a very different environment.

In Qingdao, in addition to improving their Mandarin and visits to local temples, museums and tourist attractions, girls learnt a whole host of new skills including mask-making, photography, making traditional Chinese food, Chinese cinema, paper cutting, calligraphy, traditional singing and dancing.

In Beijing they visited the Confucius Institute Headquarters, Beijing Zoo, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China and Summer Palace. The shopping trip to Hong Qiao Market, where the girls honed their bartering skills in Mandarin, was the icing on the cake and the live martial art performance that followed was breathtaking. The temperature in Beijing was very high, but the girls’ enthusiasm to take it all in was definitely higher.

The Queen School won an excellence award in the Achievement Exhibition in Beijing. The ideas and designs the girls presented were both innovative and thought provoking, demonstrated a clear and in-depth understanding of Chinese architecture. The focus of the world's longest sea bridge, Jiao-Zhou Bridge in Qingdao, encapsulated the theme of the Summer Camp: to reach out to far and beyond places.

Group leader and Mandarin teacher at Queen's Lucy Whittam said: "The trip was a wonderful opportunity for the girls to discover another culture which is very different from their own. They had a packed itinerary and we made the very most of our time there."